The multiplayer Battle Royale genre has taken the gaming world by storm. While PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, better known as PUBG, may not have been the first game of its kind, it certainly revolutionized the genre, helping it spread across the globe.
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Multiple awards and millions of downloads later, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is as popular as ever. The story of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is a modern-day love story between developers and gamers.
If you're not familiar with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the battle royale genre, or need a quick refresher, here's a brief recap.
At the beginning of the game, the player parachutes onto a very large map with up to 99 other players. You decide for yourself which area of the map you will land on, which you think is the most suitable for your next step. Once you reach the ground, the goal is to be the last person or team standing. By using the best possible weapons and tools, finding the most advantageous positions and neutralizing your opponents, the goal can be achieved. PUBG is a massively multiplayer online game in a first- or third-person perspective, where up to 100 players compete in a battle royale deathmatch. You can play alone, in a duo or up to 4 players in a team. Players start with no equipment beyond custom clothing options that do not affect gameplay.
Weapons and tools are placed in empty buildings, ghost towns, hangars, and warehouses around the massive map. Vehicles are also available to provide faster movement within the arena. To keep players moving, the playable area gradually shrinks to a random location on the massive map. If players are outside the “safe zone,” they suffer wear and tear until they die or find themselves back inside the safe zone. Upon completion of each round, players earn in-game currency based on their performance.
These coins are used to purchase crates containing various items for character or weapon customization. A rotating "player mode" was added to the game in March 2018. These events alter the normal rules of the game, such as creating larger groups or changing the distribution of weapons and armor on the game map. The game ends when one player or group is the only one left alive.
Now that we've explained a little about how PUBG is played, let's talk about its history and evolution.
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Game developer, Brendan Greene “PlayerUnknown”, had previously designed the ARMA 2 mod DayZ: Battle Royale in the early 2010s, inspired by the 2000 Japanese film “Battle Royale”.
In the film, a class of Japanese students are stranded on an island and forced to kill each other until the last one is left alive. Greene was living in Brazil at the time and played a lot of video games . Feeling that many existing online action games were repetitive, he wanted to create something with more randomness.
The Battle Royale genre revolves around survival, exploration, and action, and has quickly become one of the most popular game genres in the past couple of years. The concept originated with the Japanese film Battle Royale, but it really came to the fore as a subgenre when the Hunger Games hit the big screen.
The first adaptations of the game appeared in mods for games like Minecraft and ARMA 2. However, after the releases of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite in 2017, the genre became a cultural phenomenon. The open-world maps and heavy randomization seemed to be what most players wanted.
Sony Online Entertainment was watching Greene's work and clearly impressed, offered him a job as a consultant on its new battle royale-themed game H1Z1.
Meanwhile, South Korean video game developer Chang-han Kim wanted his games to gain global fame. One genre he saw was starting to attract a few fans in the West was battle royale, though the South Korean reception had been only lukewarm so far
After playing DayZ, Kim reached out to its developer, Brendan Greene, which eventually led to Kim offering Greene a job as Creative Director at his company Bluehole. Kim's vision was to work with Greene to develop a new Battle Royale concept. Development of the game began in 2016 and was scheduled to be completed a year later, in 2017. An early beta version was released in March 2017.
The game's popularity grew even more after that, as players had never seen a game like it before – and they loved it. Realizing how massive the game could be, Bluehole turned all its attention to PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, even renaming the studio to PUBG Corporation.
The game was fully released in December 2017 for PC and was an immediate success, and the following year it was released on Xbox One and PS4 consoles and Android and iOS mobile devices. About a month after its initial release, over one million copies of the game had been sold. After three months, over five million players had purchased the game.
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And by the time the full game was released, over 30 million players were playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, making it one of the most successful games of all time.
As of 2020, the game has been downloaded over 600 million times with the majority of downloads in China and India.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has exploded since its early release. The game made the Battle Royale genre what it is today and has influenced thousands of video game developers.
It has been awarded “Best Multiplayer Game”, “Best In-Development Game” and “Game of the Year” among a host of other accolades.
Although it differs from many other esports, it has found a place in international competitions and tournaments.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is equally fun for amateurs and professionals due to its randomization, user-friendliness, and replay value. From the moment Kim and Greene met, there was no doubt: PUBG would be something new and original, rewarding and enjoyable, a modern classic.
